压力之下的中央银行将何去何从？

这里是NPR的《金钱星球》。卡洛琳娜·加里加是一名观察者，不是那种潜艇潜望镜或碉堡双筒望远镜式的观察者，但她作为学者的职责，就是为全球各国央行充当某种困境预警人。从肯尼亚中央银行到日本银行，这些理想中应独立守护经济稳定的机构，她正在寻找迹象，检查它们是否可能已变得易受政治影响。

This is Planet Money from NPR. Carolina Gariga is a watcher, not a periscope out the submarine, binoculars in the bunker kind of watcher, but her scholarly job is to be a kind of lookout for trouble in central banks across the world. She's looking for signs, checking to see if these ideally independent guardians of economic stability from the Central Bank of Kenya to the Bank

日本银行或许已变得容易受到政治影响。

of Japan have maybe become vulnerable to political influence.

你最近特别忙吗？

Have you been especially busy lately?

是的。是的。是的。要跟上新闻节奏。这些天这都快成了我的新工作。

Yes. Yes. Yes. It's keeping up with the news. It's becoming a new job for me these days.

卡洛琳娜通常并不关注我们美国联邦储备系统的政治戏剧。她更习惯于观察其他地方，比如她的祖国阿根廷，在那里总统曾公然施压央行执行其意愿，而央行照做了。

Carolina isn't usually following political dramas at our central bank, the US Federal Reserve. She's more used to looking elsewhere, like her native Argentina, where the president famously pressured the central bank to do what the president wanted, and it did.

这导致了螺旋式上升的通货膨胀，货币信誉丧失。

And that resulted in spiraling inflation, loss of credibility in the currency.

那时卡洛琳娜已不在阿根廷生活，但仍有家人在故乡。当她打电话给他们时？

By this time, Carolina was no longer living in Argentina, but she had family back home. And when she'd call them?

他们会说，我们跑了三家超市，因为要么这家超市的油太贵，要么根本没油可卖。

They would say, well, we went to three supermarkets because in this supermarket, either the oil was too expensive or there was no more oil.

通货膨胀、物资短缺，几年后卡洛琳娜在土耳其目睹了同样的剧情上演。

Inflation, shortages, Carolina saw the same thing play out a few years later in Turkey.

土耳其是货币政策当局错误操作的另一个典型范例。

Turkey is another poster child of what not to do with monetary authorities.

土耳其也曾拥有独立的中央银行，但总统希望降低利率。于是他开始不断解雇和任命央行官员，直到达到目的。你目睹这一切时作何感想？

Turkey also had an independent central bank, but the president wanted lower interest rates. So he started firing and hiring, firing and hiring until he got them. What were you thinking as you were watching that happen?

是的，这清楚展示了干预央行运作的后果。

So, yes, that was a pretty clear example of what happens when you mess with central banks.

土耳其通胀率飙升至约80%。如今已无人愿意贷款给土耳其或投资该国。

Turkey's inflation rose to around 80%. And these days, people are not lining up to loan Turkey money or invest in the country.

卡罗莱娜在白俄罗斯、津巴布韦和匈牙利目睹过相同模式。现在她看到美国正出现央行独立性遭侵蚀的早期迹象，她认为这非常不妙。

Carolina has watched these same patterns in Belarus and Zimbabwe and Hungary. And now she is watching the early phases of central bank independence erosion play out here in The US. And she's like, this is not great.

令人忧心。

It's troubling.

为何？

Why?

因为我们知晓后果。我的研究显示，央行独立性下降时，通胀波动性就会上升。大量数据证明央行独立性与良好经济成果相关，这是经济政策理性的支柱之一。

Because we know the consequences. And because I've done research showing that when central bank independence goes down, inflation volatility goes up. I mean, we have a wealth of data showing that central bank independence is associated with a lot of good economic outcomes. It's one of the pillars of rational policy making in economics.

而美元作为全球通用货币，全世界都与美国绑定。后果会是更高通胀、市场波动和信誉丧失吗？

And in the case of The US, everybody uses dollars all over the world, so everybody is tied to us. So the consequences? Higher inflation, volatility, loss of credibility?

这些都不是好事。

None of those are good things.

确实都不是好事，而且一旦发生就难以挽回。

None of those are good things, and none of those things are easy to fix once they're unleashed.

大家好，欢迎收听《金钱星球》。我是埃里卡·巴里斯。

Hello, and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Erica Barris.

我是玛丽·柴尔兹。随着我国总统与美联储开战，是时候向央行观察家们请教了。这些观察家常年密切关注全球各国央行，多年来他们手持小笔记本记录观察结果，试图评估这些央行实际或曾经在多大程度上独立于政治压力，以及当这种独立性丧失时会发生什么。今天的节目中，

And I'm Mary Childs. With our own president waging a war with the Federal Reserve, it's time to check-in with the central bank watchers. These watchers have had their eyes trained on central banks all over the world. They've had their little notebooks out for years scribbling down their observations, trying to gauge just how independent of political pressure all these central banks actually are or were, and what happens when one loses that independence. Today on

我们将走近三位顶尖央行观察家，观察他们正在关注什么。因为央行的走向决定着国家经济的命运。几乎每个国家都设有央行，它们掌管国家货币，制定货币政策，比如设定利率。

the show, we sidle up next to three of the leading central bank watchers to watch what they're watching. Because as goes your central bank, so goes the fate of your economy. Pretty much every country has a central bank. They handle a country's currency. They set monetary policy, like setting interest rates.

央行的核心理念是维持国家经济稳定，其历史可追溯至十七世纪，不过那实在太久远了。

The central idea of a central bank is to keep a country's economy stable, and they have a long history. Starts in the sixteen hundreds, but that is way too far back.

好吧，那我们就不谈十七世纪的事了。

Okay. So we're not going to talk about the 1600.

对，我们不谈。我们现在讨论央行时所指的版本——

No. We're not we're not. The version that we are thinking of right now when we talk about a central bank.

顺便再介绍一下卡洛琳娜·加里加，她是英国埃塞克斯大学政治学教授。我们请她直接跳到二十世纪，当时英国人创建了央行原型——英格兰银行。他们自认为真正掌握了管理国家货币的方法，于是派人四处传播经验。

Carolina Gariga, again, by the way, she's a professor of political science at the University of Essex in The UK, and we had her jump forward to the nineteen hundreds when the British created a sort of central bank prototype, the Bank of England. And they felt like they had really figured out how to manage a country's money, So they sent people out to spread the word.

英国王室向各国派遣使团，协助建立中央银行体系。

And there were missions sent by the crown to different countries to help countries set up central banks.

所以他们就像是央行传教士？

And So they were like central bank missionaries?

没错。可以说是将各国政府皈依到科学的货币管理之道。

Yes. Converting governments into the scientific way to deal with money if you want.

其中有一位经济学家，可以说是美国的货币传教士，他尤其具有影响力，名叫埃德温·卡梅雷尔。他协助建立了美国联邦储备系统，并走遍各地，如波兰、整个拉丁美洲，帮助建立或调整他们的中央银行体系。

And there was this one economist, an American monetary missionary, if you will, who was especially influential, Edwin Camerer. He helped set up the Federal Reserve in The US, and he traveled everywhere, like Poland, all over Latin America, helping set up or tweak their central banks.

最终，所有人都采纳了这一制度。

And eventually, everyone adopted it.

是的。嗯哼。这个理念的核心是如何为经济提供稳定性。

Yeah. Uh-huh. The idea is how to provide stability to the economy.

直到过去五十年间，中央银行独立性的理念才开始在全球范围内扎根。独立于政治之外。意味着中央银行应当考虑经济的长期健康发展，

It was only over the past fifty years that the idea of central bank independence started to take hold around the world. Independent of politics. Meaning central banks should think about the long term health of the economy,

而不仅仅是选举连任期间的经济表象。

not just what it looks like during a reelection campaign.

因为如果中央银行不独立，会带来什么危害呢？

Because what is the harm if a central bank is not independent?

危害在于货币政策决策可能被政治利益左右，从而在长期造成损害。

The harm is that monetary policy decisions may be made by political interests that can cause damage in the long term.

卡罗莱娜指出，关注中央银行并评估其独立性程度的根本原因在于，正如她的研究所示，这实际上能相当准确地预示一个国家的经济走势。作为我们的首位观察员，卡罗莱娜耗费大量时间梳理多年数据，精确揭示了中央银行丧失独立性与经济困境之间的关联。但首先，她必须审阅

Carolina says the whole reason to watch central banks and evaluate how independent they are is because, as her research shows, that will actually give you a pretty good indication of what a country's economy will do. And Carolina, our first watcher, she has spent a lot of time sorting through years of data to show exactly that link between central banks losing their independence and economic troubles. But first, she had to look

192个国家的法规和章程。她全部通读了这些文件。

at the statutes and bylaws of 192 countries. She read all of them.

我在研究中做的是查阅法律条文。从1970年到2023年间所有中央银行的法律。

Well, what I do in my research is I went and read the laws. All the central bank laws from 1970 until '23.

那时候肯定有太多东西要读了。

And then must have been so much to read.

那是很多年前的事了。

That was many years.

但是

But

是的。她在阅读时提出了诸如：央行行长的任期是多久？央行行长能否兼任政府其他职务，比如财政部长这种可能存在利益冲突的职位？银行的实际目标是什么？是仅关注通胀，还是目标非常宽泛，可能导致政治干预？

yes. And as she read them, she asked, for example, how long are central bank governors appointed for? Can a central bank governor hold another job in government, like, say, the ministry of finance that may be a conflict of interest? What are the actual objectives of the bank? Like, are they focused just on inflation, or are their goals very broad, potentially opening them up to political interference?

即使央行行长是独立任命的，若目标过于宽泛且相互矛盾，仍会使央行面临政治干预风险。这些因素都构成央行独立性的衡量标准。

Even if you have an autonomous central banker, the objectives are so broad and sometimes conflicting that open the central bank to political interference. So all these things are in the metrics of central bank independence.

通过将这些疑问与通胀、失业等经济数据交叉比对，卡罗琳娜建立了大型数据集，显示在央行独立性下降的国家（如白俄罗斯、土库曼斯坦、委内瑞拉），经济遭受了更严重的通胀和波动。而在克罗地亚、摩洛哥等推行央行独立性改革的国家，经济更加稳定。现在卡罗琳娜指出，特朗普威胁美国央行独立性将产生

And by cross checking those questions with economic data on things like inflation and unemployment, Carolina has created her own big dataset that shows that in countries where central banks have become less independent, like in Belarus, Turkmenistan, Venezuela, the economies have suffered more inflation and volatility. And in countries that have had reforms to make more independent central banks like Croatia and Morocco, their economies have been more stable. And now Carolina says Trump threatening the independence of the central bank in

这

The

美国央行的独立性，其影响尤为深远，因为我们的货币在全球流通。

US, it has uniquely huge implications because our money is used all over the world.

美元本身就是全球多数国家关注的焦点。若出现通胀或货币政策失信、美元贬值，将产生连锁反应。

The dollar in itself is a matter of concern for most countries in the world. If there is inflation or if there is loss of credibility of monetary policy or of the dollar, this will have a rippling effect.

会产生连锁反应。

Will have a rippling effect.

某种程度上，较小规模的经济体不具备那种颠覆性潜力。

In a way that smaller economies don't have the potential to disrupt in that way.

所以卡罗莱娜是我们的头号观察者。二号观察者则从不同视角出发，他工作的核心是更清晰地界定最根本的问题：究竟什么构成了央行的独立性？我们是否真正了解央行最初是如何暴露于政治影响之下的？

So Carolina was our watcher number one. Watcher number two is looking from a different vantage point. The focus of his work is to more clearly define the most basic question. What even makes a central bank independent? Do we know what exactly exposes a central bank to political influence in the first place?

于是我们着手打造一个更精妙的解决方案。

And so we set out to build a better mousetrap.

莱夫·梅南德在哥伦比亚法学院研究并教授货币体系。几年前，他收到曾在纽约联储共事的经济学家托比亚斯·阿德里安的来信。莱夫表示自己一直很钦佩他。

Lev Menand researches and teaches monetary systems at Columbia Law School. And some years ago, he heard from an economist he'd worked with at the New York Fed, Tobias Adrian. Lev says he'd always admired him.

但只是远观，因为他是那种每年发表六篇开创性论文的经济学家。而当时的我连经济学博士学位都没有——后来也始终未获得。

But only from a distance because he was this economist who published, you know, six, like, groundbreaking papers per year. And I was a kid who hadn't even gotten a PhD in economics, which I never did.

当托比亚斯来电时，已是多年之后。此时的莱夫已是知名法学学者，托比亚斯也在国际货币基金组织（IMF）担任要职。托比亚斯寻求的是莱夫的协助。

By the time Tobias called, it was years later. Now Lev was a well known legal scholar, and Tobias was pretty senior at the International Monetary Fund, the IMF. And what Tobias wanted was Lev's help.

要知道，IMF的主要职能是向各国提供贷款以促进发展。但这只是借贷，并非馈赠。

See, a major function of the IMF is to lend money to countries so they can grow. But it's a loan, not a gift.

他们希望贷款能良性运转。

They want their loans to be good.

没错。他们期待贷款能被偿还。因此专门设立团队收集分析全球各国的央行法规。他们联系我，探讨是否有兴趣利用这个数据库来解答研究问题。

Yes. They want their loans to be repaid. So they have a whole staff of people that collect and analyze central bank statutes from every country in the world. And they reached out to me so that we could talk about would it be of interest to me to work with this database to try to answer research questions.

这难道不是天赐良机？莱夫、托比亚斯与同样来自IMF的合著者阿什拉夫·汗首次通过Zoom会面，商讨如何利用这个数据库。结果发现其潜力远超预期。

Would it ever? Lev and Tobias and their coauthor Ashraf Khan, also from the IMF, they meet for the first time over Zoom to talk about what they could do with this database. And it turns out it's a lot.

我们带着大约10项任务来露营，现在连第一项都还没完成。我直说吧，我们甚至还没搞定第一个任务。

We camp with, like, 10 things to do, and we're still on the first one. I'll be clear. We haven't even finished the first one.

你们才刚打到第一局呢。

You're just in the first inning.

是啊。而且我们可能永远打不完这场棒球赛。

Yes. And we we may never finish the baseball game.

但就在这第一局，他们发现了突破口。你看，列夫说研究人员一直用九十年代几篇著名论文里的指标，来衡量不同央行的相对独立性。但列文公司发现还有改进空间。

But in this first inning, they saw an opening. See, Lev says researchers had been using these indexes from some famous papers from the nineties to measure the relative independence of different central banks. But Levin Company saw some room for improvement.

有个指标变得非常权威，但在我看来，它对某些法律特征是否增强央行自主性的判断相当糟糕。

There's this one index that became very prominent that, in my opinion, made some pretty bad judgment calls about whether certain legal features made it a central bank more or less autonomous.

比如，获得独立性评分的一个标准是央行行长任期更长。

Like, one way to get points for being independent was if the head of your central bank had a longer tenure.

然后你还会因为诸如'免遭随意撤职'之类的条款得分。

And then you would get points for things like protection from removal at will.

防止总统直接解雇你，然后安插更合他心意的人。

Protection from the president just firing you and installing someone more to their liking.

我们提出的观点是：如果可以被随意撤职，八年任期就毫无价值。所以除非同时限制行政机构撤换央行行长的权力，否则给八年任期打分根本就是个错误。

The point that we made is it's not worth much to have an eight year term if you can be removed at will. And so it's kind of a mistake to give any points at all for an eight year term unless it's paired with a restriction on the executive's power to remove the central bank head.

类似这样的问题还有一大堆。

There were a bunch of things like this.

当你从文献中发现一个能让自己有所贡献的突破口时，确实会感到兴奋。就是那种感觉。没错。就是这样。

You do get excited when you see something in the literature that creates an opening for a contribution by oneself. By you. That is it. Yes. That is it.

那种兴奋感难以言表。就像是，哇哦，这个课题我们可以深入研究。

That that is an exciting feeling. Like, oh, wow. Like, this is something we can work on.

在Zoom会议室里，列夫和他未来的两位合著者讨论着：既然那些假设不太靠谱，而我们又有这个全新的IMF数据库，完全可以构建更优质的指数。

In their Zoom room, Lev and his two future coauthors are like, so if those assumptions were kinda wacky and we have this great new IMF database, we can just make a better index.

于是他们动员IMF的研究助理，开始梳理各国央行法律条文，还对87位央行官员展开大规模调研。基于这些信息，他们为每条央行法规制定了评分标准。

So they enlist research assistants at the IMF. They start sifting through all the different laws governing central banks in all the different countries, and they also do a big survey of 87 central bank officials. And with all that information, they assign each rule governing central banks a score.

必须有人通读全部法律条文并逐项判定：这个维度该打1分还是0分？那个维度又该打几分？

Somebody has to read the whole statute statute and go through and decide. Is this a one or a zero on this dimension? Is it a one or a zero on that dimension?

想象这些IMF研究助理拿着红色和绿色标记笔，逐条批注时的样子——'噢，这条...'

So you have all these IMF research assistants, and they've got their red marker and their green marker. And they go through, and they're like, oh.

实际流程可比这数字化多了，你描述的太有复古感了。

A little bit more digital than that. You have, like, an analog vision of how this looks.

但永远如此。

But Always.

他们用的是Excel表格，操作时

They have an Excel spreadsheet, and they go

标记那些红红绿绿。

through those red or green.

你可以添加颜色。我记得我们的一些电子表格里就有颜色设置。

You could you could put colors. I think some of our spreadsheets have colors.

感谢您同意这一点。

Thank you for granting me that.

关于哪些内容标绿、哪些标红，这才是关键且困难的部分。因为这些决定央行独立性定义的选择并非随意，但确实带有主观性。举例来说，九十年代有个指数就将央行何时或如何放贷的规则，看得比制定货币政策重要得多，这让塔列夫和他的合著者觉得过于武断。

As to what to highlight in green and what to highlight in red, this is the important part, the hard part. Because these choices deciding what defines central bank independence, they are not arbitrary, but they are subjective. For example, one of

因此他们在调查中邀请央行官员协助更审慎地权衡每条规则。但即便在团队内部，也引发了大量细致到令人痛苦的争论。

the indices from the nineties ranked rules about when or how the central bank can lend money as way more important than setting monetary policy, which Talev and his coauthors seemed arbitrary. So in their surveys, they asked central bank officials to help weight each rule more thoughtfully. But even amongst their own team, there was a lot of debate, granular pain seeking debate.

哦，你是这么想的啊。

Oh, you thought that. You thought that.

比如最初他们有个评分标准：要获得高独立性分数，央行能否直接向政府放贷？理想答案应该是否定的。

For example, at first, one of their metrics was to get a high independent score, can the central bank lend to the government directly? You want the answer to be no.

阿根廷当时就是这么做的。但许多政府确实允许央行短期直接向其放贷。调查中央行官员表示，这不同于长期放贷且危害较小。因此列夫团队区分了这两种情况并相应调整权重。还有那个困扰列夫的九十年代指标——只要央行行长任期长就能得分，哪怕他们也可能被轻易解职。

That's what Argentina was doing. But a lot of governments do permit their central banks to lend directly to them on a short term basis. In their survey, central bank officials said that was different and less bad than lending long term. So Lev and his team broke out that distinction and weighted it accordingly. Then there was that metric from the nineties that had bothered Lev that assigned independence points for central bankers getting long terms, even if they can also be easily fired.

我们不会为那些表面赋予独立性、实则存在完全破坏该独立性的法律漏洞的条款加分。

We didn't give credit for legal features that suggested independence when they were paired with loopholes that totally undermined any independence those features would have provided.

所以你们采用的是叠加效应。你们的评判标准是'若满足条件则...'的类型。

So yours is like a layering effect. Yours is an if then kind of criteria.

没错。我们整合了约五项标准并规定：必须全部满足，才能在我们指数中这个维度的独立性上获得评分。

Exactly. We put together, like, five things and said, you gotta have all of these to get any credit under our index on this dimension of independence.

最终，列夫和他的同事们提出了一份包含10项更新后的央行独立性衡量标准清单。

Ultimately, Lev and his colleagues have come up with a list of 10 updated metrics of central bank independence.

但正如他所说，这只是他们的第一局。特别是当他看到特朗普总统目前对美联储施加的压力时，他已经注意到他们新标准中的一个缺陷。

But like he said, this is only their first inning. And especially while he is watching president Trump's current pressure on the Fed, he's already noting a shortcoming in their new metrics.

因为这些标准基于法律和法规，所有关于这些央行应该如何运作的书面和编纂内容。它们代表的是所谓的法律上的独立性，即依法独立。但法律并不能告诉你人们如何行事。那就是事实上的独立性。

Because they're based on laws and statutes, everything written down and codified about how these central banks are supposed to work. They represent what's called de jure independence, independence by law. But laws don't tell you how people act. That is de facto independence.

你可能拥有一部完美的、最先进的央行法规，但如果法治缺失，国家总统可以随意威胁绑架央行官员，如果他们不按他说的做，那么即使你在法律上的独立性得分为满分10分，实际上也没有独立性可言。

You could have a state of the art central banking statute that is perfect, but there's no rule of law. And so the president of the country can come along and just threaten to kidnap the central bankers if they don't do what he says, then there's no de facto independence even if you're a 10 out of 10 on de jure independence.

所以法律需要被执行？

So laws need to be enforced?

法律需要被执行，而法律文化是美国成功的关键要素。过去一年最令人沮丧的是我们的法律文化出现了相当严重的退化。这就像是一个不断解体的过程。如果《联邦储备法》不被遵守，那么它在某个时刻说了什么又有谁在乎呢。

Laws need to be enforced, and legal culture is an absolute critical ingredient in American success. And part of what's so distressing about the last year is a pretty dramatic degradation of our legal culture. It's just been a constant unraveling. And who cares what the Federal Reserve Act says at a certain point if it's just if it's not followed.

如果它只是一张写了一些字的纸。

If it's just a piece of paper with some words on it.

是的。

Yeah.

休息之后，我们将见到一位央行观察者，他不仅关注央行说了什么，还关注它们实际做了什么。

After the break, we meet a central bank watcher who's looking at not just what central banks say, but what they actually do.

所以我们跟随第一位观察者卡罗莱娜的视角，比较不同时期央行的章程，看看哪些导致了经济问题。

So we have peered over the shoulder of watcher number one, Carolina, comparing the bylaws of central banks over time to see which of them result in economic trouble.

而第二位观察者列夫，正试图更清晰地区分哪些规则能保护央行免受政治影响。

And watcher number two, Lev, trying to better distinguish which rules protect the central bank from political influence.

现在介绍第三位观察者卡罗拉·宾德。她是德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校的经济学家，她关注的不是规则而是行动——实际行为而非法律条文。

Now watcher number three. Her name is Karola Binder. She's an economist at UT Austin, and she is focused not on rules but on action. De facto, not de jure.

卡罗拉的研究着眼于央行何时何地受到压力及其应对措施。她的研究始于2018年，那时经济环境平静，物价年增长率约2%，几乎没人关注通胀——但卡罗拉例外。

Karola's research looks at when and where central banks are being pressured and what they are doing in response. Her journey started in 2018, a time of placid economic conditions, a time when the rate of price increases was like 2% per year, and pretty much nobody was thinking about inflation. But Karola was.

我喜欢把2018年视为央行政治化的元年。央行一直承受政治压力，但2018年这种现象在全球范围内受到了更多关注。

I kind of like to think of it as the year of politicization of central banks. You know, they've always been under political pressure, but I think it got a lot more attention worldwide in 2018.

因为当时上任刚满一年的特朗普总统突然开始在推特上批评美联储。总统如此公开干预实属罕见。

Because all of a sudden, president Trump, one year into his first term at that point, started tweeting critically about the Fed. That the president would weigh in like that was very new.

虽是新现象，但同期全球其他央行也面临压力：土耳其局势开始紧张，印度也暗流涌动。

New, but also right around then, other central bank pressure situations were unfolding around the world. Turkey was starting to look kinda pressure y. Things were starting to percolate in India.

卡罗拉观察到这些苗头后，想探究这种现象的普遍性：央行受压迫的频率及后果？法律条文宣称央行独立很容易，但对卡罗拉而言，真正重要的是对局势的叙事性解读——不是卡罗莱娜和列夫研究的规则，而是实际行为。因此她决定研究2010年至2018年撰写报告时的数据。

And Carol is watching all of this start to bubble up, and she wants to know how common is this? How often are central banks pressured, and what happens after that? Like, it's one thing to have laws written down that say, our central bank is super independent. But to Karla, what might really matter is a more narrative read of the situation, Not the rules that Carolina and Lev have looked at, but the behaviors. So Karola decides to look at the period from 2010 right up to the very moment when she's reading the reports in 2018.

她寻找能揭示央行实际行为（而非法律规定）的数据，最终发现两个关键数据源。

She looks for data that can show her not just what the laws say, but what central banks actually do. And she finds two data sources that would put the bill.

我的研究方法是在研究助理协助下，研读经济学人智库和商业监测国际发布的几乎所有国家的国别报告。

The method that I used was, with the help of some of my research assistants, to read through these country level reports that are put out by Economist Intelligence Unit and Business Monitor International for nearly every country.

本质上是实时记录央行面临压力及应对措施的新闻来源。

Basically, news sources narrating in real time what pressure central banks were facing and what they were doing about it.

我们会通篇阅读，查看在那个特定季度的报告中是否提及该银行受到政治压力。

And we would read through and see whether there was any mention of political pressure on that particular bank in that quarter.

在她的数据集中，她寻找的是特定内容。

In her dataset, she was looking for specific things.

报告必须明确提到类似内容：我们预计央行可能因政府施压而降低利率。表述会非常直白。

It would have to say something like, we anticipate that the central bank might cut interest rates due to pressure from the government. It would be pretty explicit.

这确实非常明确。是的。像中国这样完全掌控央行的超级威权国家，Kerala根本不感兴趣。她关注的是变革时刻和动态变化的情境。

That's pretty explicit. Yes. In super authoritarian countries that totally control their central banks, like China, Kerala is just not interested in them. She's focused on these moments of change, situations in flux.

如果一个国家从没有任何面临压力的报告，到某季度突然开始出现压力迹象。之后通胀会发生什么变化？

If a country goes from there not being any reports that they're facing pressure, then suddenly one quarter they start facing it. What happens to inflation afterwards?

Carola发现，在她研究的全球央行样本中，每年至少有10%的央行受到政治压力。

And Carola found of her pool of central banks around the world on any given year, 10% of them were getting political pressure, at least.

如果说有什么不同的话，10%已经是最保守的估计，因为可能存在分析师撰写国别报告时未能察觉的隐蔽政治压力。

If anything, the 10% is like the lowest estimate because there could have been political pressure that was so sly that the analysts writing these country reports didn't know about it.

在2010至2018年的整个样本期间，据报道近40%的央行遭遇过政治压力或干预。最常见的施压就是要求降息——这正是特朗普总统当前向美联储施加的压力。

Over the whole time sample from 2010 to 2018, almost 40% of central banks reportedly had political pressure or interference. And the pressure she saw most often to cut interest rates, exactly what president Trump is pressuring the Fed to do right now.

她的数据集中，压力方向性极其明显。事实上

The pressure was so directional in her dataset. In fact

几乎不存在例外情况。

There's almost no exceptions there.

好的。

Okay. There

有一两个案例中，我认为美国的共和党人曾表示美联储需要收紧货币政策。

were one or two cases where I think, Republicans in The US were saying that the Fed needed to tighten monetary policy.

意思是提高利率。一旦喀拉拉邦掌握了这一时期全球央行面临的压力图景，她就会观察它们是否屈服于这些压力。是否在有人嚷嚷着要降息后，它们就真的降息了？最后，她将它们的行动与价格水平进行对比。价格是上涨还是下跌？

Meaning to raise interest rates. Once Kerala has a picture of the pressures on central banks all over the world during this period, She looks at whether they succumb to the pressure or not. Do they lower rates after someone fusses at them to lower rates? And finally, she compares their actions with price levels. Do they go up or down?

喀拉拉邦发现，古老的直觉和旧的研究依然正确。当央行屈服于政治压力时，

And Kerala finds that it is pretty clear that old intuition, the old studies are still right. When central banks succumb to political pressure,

通货膨胀就会加剧。这正是2014年埃尔多安总统上台后土耳其发生的情况。

higher inflation. Which is exactly what happened in Turkey after president Erdogan took power in 2014.

他有一种非常规的观点，经常挂在嘴边，认为降低利率会减少通胀。这与大多数宏观经济学家和央行行长使用的模型完全相反，后者当然主张通过加息来抑制通胀。

He had this really unconventional view that he would talk about a lot, which was that lower interest rates would reduce inflation. So that's exactly the opposite of the models that most macroeconomists and central bankers use, which, of course, you know, prescribes raising interest rates to reduce inflation.

土耳其总统希望央行降息。所以每当有央行行长不配合，他就解雇他们，换上自己中意的人选。有一段时间，几乎每年都会换一个新行长。

Turkey's president wanted its central bank to cut rates. So whenever a central banker didn't cooperate, he fired them and hired who he wanted. And for a while there, there was a new one just about every year.

在央行独立性的经典经济文献中，频繁的人事变动是个明显的信号，表明情况不太妙。喀拉拉邦还发现了另一个信号——行政权力的集中化，埃尔多安在2017年也这么做了。喀拉拉邦的数据显示，相比总统制，权力较为分散的议会制中，上报的政治压力可能性更低。

And frequent turnover in the canonical economic literature of central bank independence, that's a pretty big tell that things are not going so great right now. Kerala also found another tell, consolidation of executive power, which Erdogan also did in 2017. In Kerala's data, reported political pressure is less likely in a parliamentary system where power is less concentrated as opposed to a presidential system.

当权者中有一个特定人物能够施加更大的压力。

You have one particular person in power who is able to exert that pressure more.

我们采访的三位央行观察人士都提到一点：一旦失去独立性及其好处，要重新获得实际上相当困难。这是研究了几十年法律的卡罗琳娜说的。

One thing that all three of our central bank watchers told us, it's actually quite hard to regain independence with all its benefits once you lose it. Here's Carolina, who looked at the laws over decades.

建立制度需要数十年时间，但摧毁制度却只需片刻。就中央银行而言，需要让市场相信这些机构能抵御政治压力。一旦暴露出制度无力或规则无法约束政治干预，对体系的信任或对制度的长期信任就会受损，而这种损害需要很长时间才会显现。

Building institutions takes decades, but destroying institutions takes very little time. And in the case of central banks, you need markets to believe that these institutions are going to withhold political pressure. So, once you show the institution is unable, or that the rules are unable to control political meddling, well, the trust in the system or the long term trust in the institutions is hurt, and that takes a long time to reveal.

少数重大案例之一就发生在美国。《Planet Money》的常听观众会记得，尼克松总统曾在1970年代施压美联储降低利率。通胀随之而来，美联储花了多年时间并付出巨大经济代价才重获公信力——直到时任美联储主席保罗·沃尔克最终将利率大幅提升至近20%。这也印证了卡拉团队的另一项发现。

One of the few big examples is actually here in The US. Regular Planet Money listeners will recall president Nixon pressured the Fed to lower interest rates in the nineteen seventies. Inflation began, and it took years and a lot of economic pain for the Fed to regain credibility. It wasn't until Fed chair Paul Volcker finally jacked up interest rates to almost 20%. Which illustrates something else Kerala found.

关于央行受压和政治干预的报道越多，

The more reports of central bank pressure and political interference,

由此引发的公信力侵蚀就会让后续通胀持续更长时间。

the longer the subsequent inflation sticks around because of that erosion of credibility.

就像当前美国特朗普总统施压我们的央行，他总在社交媒体上抨击杰罗姆·鲍威尔关于利率的决策，还指控美联储理事丽莎·库克涉及抵押贷款欺诈，试图罢免她的职务。

And like right now in The US with president Trump pressuring our central bank, he's always posting, going after Jerome Powell about interest rates. And he's accused Fed governor Lisa Cook of mortgage fraud and is trying to remove her from her post.

丽莎·库克已提起诉讼，称其罢免理由不成立。此案将经由法院审理，其结果至关重要——甚至可能让列夫重新打开他那套彩色编码的电子表格。

Lisa Cook has sued him saying he has no cause to do that. The case will work its way through the courts. And that will determine a lot. Enough that it may make Lev open back up his color coded spreadsheet.

我们原先将美国评为'总统无权随意罢免美联储理事会成员'的独立等级，因其任期受法律保护。但如果法院裁定'正当理由'条款形同虚设，那我们的评分可能就需要调整。

We have The United States scored as having independence with respect to the members of the board of governors from the president for removal because we have it scored as a protected term in office. But if courts were to determine that for cause doesn't really mean anything, the the then we maybe don't have this scored right.

列夫、卡罗拉和卡罗莱娜此刻正睁大眼睛，在记事本上奋笔疾书。

Lev and Karola and Carolina, their eyes are wide open right now, and they are scribbling away on their little notepads.

若想深入了解中央银行的世界，请查看我们的节目注释。关于美联储——我们做过大量报道，比如其起源故事，以及特朗普试图罢免丽莎·库克

If you wanna dive deeper into the world of central banks, check out our show notes. The Federal Reserve, we have covered it a lot. Like the Fed's origin stories and about Trump's efforts to remove Lisa Cook from

职务的始末。这些内容与其他更多节目都在注释中。本期节目由薇拉·鲁宾制作，萨姆·黄马·凯斯勒协助制作，玛丽·安妮·麦丘恩编辑，塞拉·华雷斯事实核查，罗伯特·罗德里格斯和玛吉·卢塔尔负责音频工程。

her post. Those episodes and many more are in the show notes. This episode was produced by Willa Rubin with production help from Sam Yellow Horse Kessler. It was edited by Mary Anne McCune and fact checked by Sierra Juarez. Engineering by Robert Rodriguez and Maggie Luthar.

亚历克斯·戈德马克是我们的执行制片人。特别感谢查理·基尔、约翰·凯尔西以及WHYY。我是玛丽·柴尔兹。我是埃里卡·巴里斯。

Alex Goldmark is our executive producer. Special thanks to Charlie Keier, John Kelsey, and to WHYY. I'm Mary Childs. And I'm Erica Barris.

这里是NPR。感谢您的收听。

This is NPR. Thanks for listening.